Classic Fantasy Archives - Page 10 Of 12

October 4, 2022

Adar Strikes First In “The Rings Of Power” Episode 6

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER EPISODE SIX AHEAD!**

“”The Eagles!” cried Bilbo once more, but at that moment a stone hurtling from above smote heavily on his helm, and he fell with a crash and knew no more.”

– The Hobbit, The Clouds Burst, p. 260

“‘The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!’ For one moment more Pippin’s thought hovered. ‘Bilbo!’ it said. ‘But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it is ended now. Good-bye!’ And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more.”

– The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, The Black Gate Opens, p. 893

For as much as J.R.R. Tolkien’s great tales, The Silmarillion and The Lord Of The Rings in particular, are stories set in times of war that deal with related themes, they are not about the act of warfare itself. Wherever he possibly can, Tolkien simply avoids having to write about battles entirely by knocking his viewpoint characters unconscious in the first five minutes of combat and having them wake up hours later after the fighting has concluded – see, for example, the two passages quoted above. Where he cannot fall back on this trick, he nonetheless still pulls back from the heat and intensity of the action to give readers a concise play-by-play of the battle from the distant perspective of a narrator. I suspect that as a veteran of the First World War he had difficulty writing about bloodshed in great detail.

Going into The Rings Of Power‘s sixth episode, therefore, my worst fear was that it would be, from beginning to end, an interminable action sequence devoid of the microcosmic, quiet and emotionally-charged moments between characters that Tolkien generally preferred to settle on between more vague descriptions of military movements – to name just a few examples, Aragorn leaning wearily on his sword to chat with Éomer at Helm’s Deep and again on the Pelennor Fields; Éowyn trading blows with the Witch-king while protecting the body of her fallen king; Merry and Pippin stumbling through the streets of Minas Tirith to the Houses of Healing. The opposite extreme would have been a battle robbed of even a pretense at weight and consequence by characters stopping every five seconds to make some witty remark in Marvel-movie fashion.

Happily, my fears did not come to fruition. Under the direction of Charlotte Brändström (only the second female director on this franchise, at least to my knowledge, after Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson’s wife and co-director on The Lord Of The Rings), The Rings Of Power‘s largest and longest action sequence to date strikes a balance between being entertaining and engaging for its audience and absolutely exhausting for its characters. Indeed, the violence is more brutal than anything in the first five episodes – and at times, more than anything in either of Peter Jackson’s two trilogies, which generally refrained from showing human characters die gruesome deaths. Brändström seems to have no such qualms, pushing the limits of the TV-14 rating about as far as I think is possible.

But the most intense moments in this episode occur amidst lulls in the fighting, such as when the village healer and de facto leader of the Southlanders, Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), is wounded in battle by an arrow and has to try and remain still while her lover Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) pulls the shaft from her shoulder, all while she’s losing lots of blood and watching wide-eyed as her fellow Southlanders are dying in droves without her assistance. I’m squeamish about gory injuries, so the fact that I had to turn my face away from the screen both times I watched the episode may say nothing about how brutal it actually is, but it’s not just the bloodiness of the scene or the sound-effects of the arrow sliding through flesh that made me physically shudder – Boniadi and Córdova’s tortured expressions and frantic performances help to ensure the scene is difficult to watch, in the best way.

But in an episode that also features the very first kiss between their two characters, it’s a bit of a shame that Boniadi and Córdova’s portrayal of mingled pain resonated with me, while their halfhearted attempts to convey romantic interest in the other fell flat. I simply don’t understand, six episodes into the first season, why they’re in love beyond the fact that they share an interest in nurturing and healing – plants in Arondir’s case, people and animals in Bronwyn’s. I appreciated that they finally confessed their love for each other at the same spot where they rendezvoused in episode one, hands clasped over the living woods of a tree growing in the middle of Tirharad, thereby connecting them to Middle-earth and to the Vala whom Arondir claims “watches over growing things and those who tend them”, Yavanna Kementári (her name, sadly, cannot legally be used by Amazon, as it never appears in The Lord Of The Rings or its Appendices), but the heavy emphasis on this one surface-level aspect of their attraction doesn’t make up for an absence of anything else deeper to it.

Their most touching moment comes when they plant the alfirin seeds Bronwyn gave Arondir back in episode one, to ensure the survival of one new life before the imminent death of hundreds, if not thousands. It’s a beautiful ritual, one we also see the enemy leader Adar (Joseph Mawle) partake in at the beginning of the episode, subtly indicating to the audience that, while he no longer identifies exclusively as an Elf, he has retained many of the memories and customs he learned before he was turned to the darkness. The question of what Adar is and whether he and his Orcs have any claim to the respect they say they’re owed is one that looms heavily over this entire episode, which sees Adar leading his armies into battle with the intention of taking the Southlands – not for political purposes, but to establish a homeland for the Orcs, his “children”. He sees them as living beings whose creation, though apparently unnatural, was nonetheless permitted by the One (i.e. God or Eru Ilúvatar as He is called in Middle-earth) for a reason, in the same way Dwarves and Ents were created by other Valar and then integrated into Eru’s plan.

Adar’s nuanced opinions on this controversial subject stand in stark contrast to how Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) describes her enemies bluntly as “a mistake”, made in mockery of Elves without the blessing of the One, rendering them devoid of even the semblance of sentience and free will. Adar insists that his Orcs are masterless, following him out of genuine love, not fear or domination of the spirit. Galadriel retorts that they are still bound to Sauron, their true master, whom Adar believes he killed long ago. The argument between these two characters is one which J.R.R. Tolkien had with himself many times throughout his later life, as he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the theological implications of an evil race and began to explore alternative origin stories for the Orcs – though ultimately he was never able to settle on one he liked, and instead fell back on the excuse that the original Elven authors of the great tales were biased and unreliable, so their account of events, which was nonetheless published in The Silmarillion, might well have been a fabrication.

Where The Rings Of Power has leaned most heavily into the unreliable narrator trope, I have a suspicion it’s for many of the same reasons: the showrunners and writers either haven’t settled on the answers to this and other confounding questions, or simply don’t want to make irreversible choices that could be divisive within the fandom. Leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions once too many times can easily lead to frustration, although at least in this case there’s plenty of evidence in the writing and in Mawle’s charismatic performance that Adar is exactly what he says he is: a living person driven by the beatings of his own heart, deserving of love, respect, and a home.

Love and respect he has earned from his children many times over through countless personal sacrifices, but a home can only be earned by winning the respect of Middle-earth’s other Free Peoples, either through diplomacy or conflict – and seeing as Galadriel speaks for most Elves and Elf-friends when she says Orcs should be eradicated without mercy, Adar recognizes that diplomacy is useless and prolonged conflict will force his children to make unnecessary sacrifices. He is left with just one option: to cause a volcanic eruption that, apart from turning the tide of the battle in his favor, also leads to the sun being blocked out by a cloud of volcanic dust and ash…which, for the Orcs, means they can at last walk freely across the surface of Middle-earth in the daytime without fear of burning alive. Unfortunately, it also means those seeds Adar planted right before the battle will probably never sprout, but that’s a small price to pay in his mind. He loves his children deeply.

Paternal affection is a thematic undercurrent throughout this episode, which sees the Númenórean ship-captain Elendil (Lloyd Owen) paired up with his wayward son, Isildur (Maxim Baldry), throughout the battle. The two narrowly avoid death by Orc, death by geyser, and death by volcanic rock fragments (properly known as tephra), to come out the other side with a much stronger appreciation for each other – Isildur finally sees his father in action, casting off the disguise of the world-weary widower that he’s worn for so long in a well-intentioned effort to keep his family safe back in Númenor, now fighting fiercely to protect his loved ones. And at the same time, Elendil realizes that his attempts to stifle his son’s interests for the boy’s own sake will never succeed, for Isildur is most reckless when he feels caged-in or cornered.

Now, on that note, we have to talk about Tar-Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who watches dispassionately from the sidelines as soldiers under her command give their lives for the cause she loudly endorsed from the comfort of her palace. Either she’s self-important or a coward, and in a world where kings lead by example, it is definitely a Choice by the showrunners and writers to make the first ruling woman of color (and one of the few ruling women, period) in Middle-earth’s history a mere bystander to her first battle. If the writers want to deconstruct antiquated monarchist tropes (that’s me playing devil’s advocate, but it’s plausible given The Rings Of Power‘s other writing choices), then they need to be less subtle about it.

In-universe, I think Míriel made a terrible choice: if my predictions for the finale come true, she’ll already be returning home to find that Pharazôn has accumulated more power in her absence and is now vying for the throne with the support of the citizenry; last thing she needs is for her own troops to weigh in by revealing she did nothing in the battle. She’ll be blamed for what is quickly shaping up to be an unprecedented military disaster, and Pharazôn will effortlessly seize power before either forcing her into a politically-motivated marriage (the canonical sequence of events) or banishing her to the tower in Armenelos where her dying father is confined. Ah well, at least she looked cool in her gilded scale-mail armor and impractical radiate crown.

Despite my fear that Galadriel would be slowed down by her own heavy suit of armor, that proved not to be the case – in fact, a short clip of Galadriel swinging gracefully off the side of her horse to mow down orcs before righting herself in the saddle has been making the rounds on Twitter for the past few days after one viewer complained that it was “unlikeable” and rightfully got piled on in the the quote-tweets and comments for not only ignoring or excusing all of Legolas’ gravity-defying stunts in The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit (not to mention descriptions of Galadriel outperforming all the athletes of the Noldor in her youth), but for completely missing the point that The Rings Of Power has been trying to hammer home for a while now, which is that Galadriel is unlikeable.

Her arrogance is explicitly shown, more times than I can count on two hands, to be her greatest character flaw and a hindrance at every turn, yet annoying dudebros online act like it’s a “gotcha!” moment when they point it out – no, FirstNameBunchOfNumbers, it just means you have no concept of how positive character arcs work because the idea of bettering yourself is fundamentally abhorrent to you. And Galadriel is working on being more humble: it’s not easy for her, because she always saw arrogance and ambition as a strength (almost like she grew up surrounded by Fëanorians), but she’s slowly learning from Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) that there’s value in treating other people as equals and negotiating with them instead of always using her titles to get what she wants. She relapses when confronted by Adar, who sees right through the new persona she’s been trying to build with Halbrand’s help, but the learning process continues.

And as it does, Galadriel and Halbrand continue to grow closer…and closer…and closer, until they’re sitting mere inches apart from each other in the middle of the forest, trading shy glances and stumbling over their words. Halbrand coyly suggests that fighting alongside Galadriel, basking in her light, he felt for the first time that he could be free of guilt for all his past misdeeds, and Galadriel responds that she felt it too – which is a big deal coming from an Elf, to whom mortal Men are typically insignificant. Compare her intimate conversation with Halbrand to the chat she has with Isildur at the beginning of the episode: with Isildur, she was aloof and distant, as an adult is to a child, but with Halbrand she is present, so near they could believably kiss in that moment. And unless Halbrand is not a mortal, I don’t know how he could get Galadriel feeling butterflies (I mean, he’s good-looking, don’t get me wrong, but Elves don’t just fall for humans or crush on them, either).

Halbrand and Galadriel don’t actually kiss, hold hands, or even embrace in that moment, and I doubt they ever will, though the tension between them is palpable, and everyone – from the actors to the audience – can feel it. If The Rings Of Power had come out in the mid-2010s, these two would have been extremely popular on Tumblr and there’d be no shortage of fan-art and fan-fic dedicated to this ship (“Galbrand”, “Haladriel”, or “Halatáriel”, the latter an amalgamation of Halbrand and Alatáriel, a Telerin name ironically given to Galadriel by her canonical husband, Celeborn). But the fact that they’re still pretty popular even without the boost that Tumblr in its heyday would have provided is a testament to the writing, the chemistry that Clark and Vickers have…and the fact that they’re both very attractive, which is all it takes for us mere mortals to become obsessed, admittedly. I feel for the actor cast as Celeborn who will have to try and one-up Vickers.

In the meantime, the question next week’s episode will have to answer is whether any bond of love born in fields of battle can survive when nourished not by the fear of imminent death, which has a way of loosening tongues that would otherwise remain silent. There’s no hope for Galadriel and Halbrand in the long run, not unless Celeborn is open to a polyamorous relationship (I would not be opposed, Tolkien might be but who can say for sure?), and there’s plenty of time for death to come between Arondir and Bronwyn – not that I believe Bronwyn will die anytime soon, but I’ve always wondered if she might grow resentful towards her immortal lover, and now her near-death experience in battle has allowed that seed of fear and doubt to germinate in her heart.

And keep in mind, all of this was derived from an episode that’s largely comprised of people hacking each other to death with swords and spears. That’s the sign of a good script, a good director, and showrunners who understand that Tolkien uses violence not for shock value and never to gratify, but to say that which cannot be said by any other means. That is exactly the purpose this episode serves, and the fact that it just so happens to be one of the most action-packed hours of fantasy television I’ve ever seen is a happy coincidence, if you ask me.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10

September 27, 2022

“The Rings Of Power” Episode 5 – Controversial, But So Compelling

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER EPISODE FIVE AHEAD!**

“A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father’s) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost. Moreover, my father came to conceive of The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity….To this may be ascribed the varying speed of the narrative and fullness of detail in different parts….and also some differences of tone and portrayal, some obscurities, and, here and there, some lack of cohesion.”

– The Silmarillion: Foreword by Christopher Tolkien

I would not lightly use the words of J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher, famously critical of any and all attempts to adapt his father’s work for the screen, to deflect criticism from The Rings Of Power for the liberties it takes with the lore of Middle-earth in its fifth episode, but in this case I believe the defense is justified, if you’ll hear me out. It’s true that screenwriter Justin Doble has made some bold and controversial choices (controversial among Tolkien scholars and purists, that is; I’m not sure who else will care very much about alterations to the origins of mithril), and you need not feel compelled to appreciate the bold swings he’s taking if they don’t work for you, but – if this sort of thing is hindering your enjoyment of The Rings Of Power – I would encourage you to read that quote, in which Christopher explains away the many inconsistencies in the published Silmarillion as the result of unreliable in-universe narrators each telling their own version of events from which his father and later he himself stitched together their own heavily-abridged narrative.

Now apply that same logic, if you can, to The Rings Of Power, which is already in many regards closer akin to The Silmarillion than to The Lord Of The Rings. Think of it not as an adaptation of any particular writing, but as a “compendious narrative” told from the perspective of several different unreliable narrators who may or may not be altering or embellishing the tale, as Tolkien “admitted” to doing in the Appendices (where it’s revealed that, for instance, none of the Hobbits’ names were really their names). Or imagine, as I must while I wait for a more satisfying answer in episode six, that the apocryphal Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir, which details a duel to the death between a Balrog and an Elven warrior over a tree containing the last Silmaril, inadvertently leading to the creation of mithril, is just a song: one containing numerous “obscurities”.

Honestly, it’s not so hard to believe that the Elves would write a self-aggrandizing song accrediting one of their own with the creation of mithril – a precious metal of unparalleled strength, pliability, and beauty, which could only be found in Valinor, Númenor, and in the Misty Mountains beneath the Dwarven city of Khazad-dûm. In Middle-earth (and by the end of the Second Age in all of Arda), Khazad-dûm was the only place where mithril could be obtained, but it was treasured by all the Free Peoples and servants of Sauron alike, so I actually think there’s something to the idea that each of them would individually come up with their own outlandish origin stories for mithril to support their claims to the swiftly dwindling deposits of this rare ore (and leave it to the Elves to base their claim around a Silmaril, to which they foreswore any claim when they engaged in three separate Kinslayings over the jewels).

Nor do the contents of the Song itself offend me, because a Silmaril did end up buried in the earth along with its bearer, Maedhros, and the Elves are the type to continue telling stories about the Silmarils long after their disappearance, whether they’re true or not. Sure, the Song is overwritten (it would have been so easy to say that the Silmaril’s light permeated the earth where it was buried, creating mithril, but then I guess we’d have missed out on the animated fight with the Balrog and the moral that “true creation requires sacrifice”), but even the most convoluted exposition sounds almost natural coming from Elrond (Robert Aramayo).

No, it’s what Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) have to say about mithril and its uses that’s both controversial, deeply confusing, and oddly compelling given that nothing about this subplot ought to work, quite frankly. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very silly that mithril can apparently stave off the effects of decay and that the Elves believe (or have been led to believe) that without it, they will begin fading within a year. Even if it’s a lie started by Sauron, it all hinges on two of the wisest Elves in Middle-earth not only becoming convinced that Elvendom is dying because Gil-galad’s favorite tree is rotting (and what does that prove, anyway?), but also on them reaching the conclusion that mithril is their deliverance based on an old song of disputable accuracy. Obviously, Sauron could be in Lindon or in Eregion, fanning the flames, but it’s silly nonetheless – and sillier still that Celebrimbor’s solution is to saturate the Elves in the incomparable light of mithril (how does one go about that, exactly?).

But the pay-off to all this set-up is too brilliant for me to write off this storyline as a lost cause just yet. Elrond, finally putting those diplomatic skills of his to good use, persuades Durin IV (Owain Arthur) that it would be in his best interests to make void the oath binding them both to secrecy about mithril, by encouraging the Dwarf-prince to use mithril as leverage over the gullible Elves who are eager (dare I say desperate) to buy it in bulk. Though Gil-galad assumes the worst of his young herald for orchestrating a deal with the Dwarves behind his back, the truth is that – until we know for certain whether mithril actually possesses any healing properties that could possibly help the Elves – the Dwarves stand to lose the most from this deal, as Elrond is essentially nudging Durin and his people down the path that will inevitably lead them deeper into the dark heart of the mountains in search of mithril.

For the time being, Aramayo’s Elrond and Arthur’s Durin make for the most delightful scene-partners with lively comedic banter that has routinely provided fans with memeable dialogue (“give me the meat, and give it to me raw”, innocuous enough with context, is one of those lines that seems destined, if not purposefully designed, to spawn a thousand spicy fanfics featuring the two characters). They have chemistry, with Disa as well as with each other, which is more than can be said of all the chaste straight monoamorous couples that The Rings Of Power wants its viewers to ship – no offense, but Eärien (Ema Horvath) and Kemen (Leon Wadham) scrubbing floors together offscreen just doesn’t cut it when you have the Dwarves talking so freely about their passion for each other.

And Eärien and Kemen don’t have the excuse that Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) have, which is that they’ve been too preoccupied recently with matters of war to give priority to matters of the heart…although, if we’re being brutally honest, not enough happens in the Southlands this episode to excuse the absence of any intimate scenes between these two star-crossed lovers who still can’t seem to muster any emotion stronger than apathy when they look into each other’s eyes. Arondir’s scenes with Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), Bronwyn’s son, establish that the Silvan Elf has a place in their family-unit as a second father to the teen, but they all seem equally baffled as to how that happened.

Individually, or whenever they’re not asked to feign romantic attraction to each other, Córdova and Boniadi deliver far more dynamic performances. In a moving monologue towards the end of the episode, Bronwyn asks whether her and her people are destined to crawl back to the familiar embrace of darkness, mere minutes after the elderly Waldreg (Geoff Morrell) did just that, leading a contingent of the refugees from Tirharad to the enemy camp in search of their true god-king, Sauron. The experienced Morrell is another stand-out from the episode, nailing his character’s most crucial scene – when Waldreg, aggressively confronted by Adar (Joseph Mawle) over his use of the name Sauron, switches sides in an instant and even proves himself by sacrificing one of his fellow townsfolk, the boy Rowan (Ian Blackburn). There are shades of Abraham and Isaac in this story, except that Adar, whatever else he may be, does not intend to rule as a merciful god.

I think it’s safe to say, based on this episode, that Adar has ruled himself out as a potential Sauron – even apart from assaulting Waldreg for using the name, his stated intention to take apart the world and rebuild it from scratch doesn’t comfortably line up with what we know about Sauron’s motivations, as outlined in Morgoth’s Ring. There, it is said that Sauron “did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it”, in stark contrast to what is said of Sauron’s former master Morgoth, whose “one ultimate object” was the destruction of everything in existence. This suggests to me that Adar was turned by Morgoth and converted to his line of thinking (more evidence for my theory that he’s Maeglin).

This episode also instilled in me confidence that Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) really is just some guy from the Southlands, though he admits to committing unspeakable crimes in a dramatic sequence intercut with Waldreg swearing fealty to Adar. Halbrand may be a servant of Adar’s or Sauron’s seeking escape from his oaths, but I do not believe he is the Dark Lord himself. The fact that he only bribed Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) into giving him a Guild-crest so he could stay in Númenor and start a new life, coupled with his reluctance to join the Númenórean armies headed for Middle-earth, says to me that he had no plans to manipulate the progress of the war once it reached the Southlands. Now, he could have been planning to make headway with the Númenóreans while the Queen-Regent was gone, but if so, why abandon that plan for the sake of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark)? Why, unless he finally realizes that she is his one shot at salvation?

That being said, I was also convinced that the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) had good intentions at the end of episode three, when he selflessly helped the Brandyfoot family out of a tight spot…but now I’m not so sure. Weyman’s acting-choices have become more purposeful as the Stranger has slowly regained awareness, and they all point towards this character being both dangerous and fierce. His fall from the sky also conveniently erased any memory he might have had of the three mysterious white-robed women (including Bridie Sisson as “The Dweller”, whom you may remember many fans mistook for Sauron) who are now pursuing him and the Harfoots across Rhovanion for unknown reasons. These women, collectively referred to as the Mystics by Amazon, wear stylized depictions of the sun, moon, and stars on their persons, and one carries a sky disk on which is inscribed the very same constellation sought by the Stranger.

Now, I’m not saying the Mystics are definitely acolytes of the two Blue Wizards, I’m just saying there are canonical accounts of “secret cults and ‘magic’ traditions” being established in the east and south of Middle-earth (where the “stars are strange”, according to Aragorn) by these mysterious beings of celestial origin who arrived in the Second Age to combat Sauron, and I have long wanted The Rings Of Power to do something with the Blue Wizards anyway, and maybe they can if Amazon obtains the rights to the specific chapter of Unfinished Tales that deals with the Five Wizards, and this is turning into a tangent now but basically my theory is that the Stranger is Rómestámo a.k.a. Pallando a.k.a. the second Blue Wizard.

Blue Wizard or not, the Stranger’s magical abilities seem too diverse to belong to anyone but a sorcerer. A Balrog would only be able to control fire and shadow, Old Man Willow would only hypnotize, the Man in the Moon…well, I’m not entirely sure, but something tells me he wouldn’t be the type to create shockwaves, which is the Stranger’s go-to move when he or his loved ones are in danger. There’s also the cost of the Stranger’s magic to consider – every time he’s consciously used magic with just his bare hands, he’s hurt himself or someone around him. In episode five, he is injured by his own magic while protecting his friend Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) from a pack of carnivorous eohippus, and later, while performing a healing spell on himself, hurts her too. This leads me to believe that his character arc this season will culminate in him either making or receiving a staff that will allow him to channel magic without hurting anybody.

The exact power and purpose of a Wizard’s staff is one of those questions to which there is no good answer, because Tolkien never provided one. He clearly considered them to be weapons in the hands of Wizards, as Gandalf makes use of his staff many times throughout The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, and Wormtongue specifically forbids its use in the Golden Hall of Meduseld. Furthermore, Gandalf strips Saruman of all but a fraction of his former power by breaking his staff in Isengard, and a point is made of it when Gandalf’s staff is broken on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. It is also said that all Five Wizards possessed one. But the staffs may be a relic of an early version of the story where the Wizards (with a capital W) were merely wizards (with a lowercase W), before Tolkien conceived of them as angels. It is hard to believe that any of the Maiar, the class of immortals to which Gandalf and his brethren belonged, would rely on a staff – though perhaps in their mortal bodies, such tools were required.

I have no doubt that there will be more discourse on this subject if and when the Stranger obtains his staff, so for the time being let’s shift our attention away from Middle-earth entirely to the island kingdom of Númenor, where it’s been easily four or five days since Tar-Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) pledged to escort Galadriel to the Southlands with five ships bearing five-hundred men-at-arms, yet somehow neither they nor anyone else in the kingdom has found time to change their clothes. It’s actually appalling that The Rings Of Power, with its gargantuan budget, still can’t afford more than a few costume-changes for its lead characters, particularly when so many of these characters are supposed to embody the very concept of opulence. Am I supposed to believe that the Queen-Regent of Númenor is out here wearing the exact same outfit and hairstyle from day-to-day, not even experimenting with different jewelry?

Maybe she’s a minimalist. That’s cool. But Pharazôn the Golden sure as hell isn’t a minimalist, so what excuse does he have for repeating outfits? At least the smaller-than-average wardrobe for each of these characters means that the camera gets to spend more time lovingly examining every detail of the clothes and hairstyles they do wear – from Míriel’s three gorgeous headpieces to Bronwyn’s reliable burnt-orange boots. But standing out from a sea of faux Roman and Medieval tunics in Númenor and flowy, pre-Raphaelite inspired gowns and robes in Lindon, the burnished silver plate-armor worn by Galadriel towards the end of this episode stands out to me as one of The Rings Of Power‘s most instantly iconic fits (it was, in fact, featured in some of the very first promotional images and posters). My only concern is that, if this suit of armor is as heavy and uncomfortable as it looks, it may hinder Clark’s ability to convincingly pull off the same graceful twirls she used in this episode to wipe the floor with a few Númenórean soldiers.

There’s a playful side to Clark’s Galadriel that shines through in this whimsical fight sequence, harkening back to Tolkien’s description of Elves in The Hobbit as flighty, teasing creatures. Yet naturally, this had led to complaints from certain viewers that she’s too playful after weeks of them calling her “emotionless” and “bland” (some of the vaguest, most tiring criticisms leveled against actresses), because people can’t seem to settle on what their issue is with her. They’ll bemoan that she’s nothing like the character Tolkien wrote, which is arguably just a fact, not a fully-formed opinion on the character Amazon has written based on the many different, often contradictory, accounts of Galadriel’s life and demeanor that Tolkien himself wrote.

I want to bring your attention back once more to the quote from The Silmarillion that I included at the top of this article, where Tolkien’s son states outright that the stories contained therein are not intended to be taken at face-value, for they are none of them necessarily true or unbiased in their account of what “really” happened. And if a complete consistency is not to be looked for in Tolkien’s own writings, how can we possibly expect to find it in a loose adaptation of the writings in question? In our desperation to have order (or canon), I fear that some of us would go so far as to strip Tolkien’s great tales of their inconsistencies and the complexities that arise as a result of these: the subtle hints pointing at hidden biases in each narrator’s voice for the reader to suss out on their own.

I fully understand the temptation, as did Tolkien, who by all accounts was a relentless perfectionist. He was many times throughout his life tempted to retroactively revise his published works to bring them into accordance with whichever new version of the Middle-earth mythos he had just developed: yet he stopped short of fixing even major continuity errors in The Hobbit at the urging of his friends, who warned him that in his desire for consistency he was sucking all the fun out of a simple children’s bedtime story. He caved once, rewriting an entire chapter of The Hobbit post-publication, but in that case he came up with an entire in-universe excuse for how that happened, with Bilbo taking the blame for writing down a false account of what transpired that frankly ought to still be included in copies of The Hobbit, as it becomes quite important later on in The Lord Of The Rings.

Anyway, none of this is to say that you have to like the choices The Rings Of Power made regarding mithril, its origins or its properties – just that every adaptation, and all of Tolkien’s works for that matter, contain moments of discrepancy like this one where the need for compelling drama or clarity takes precedence over the desire for continuity, because they are not religious scriptures containing any kind of objective truth. Just something to keep in mind going forward, as I’m sure we’ll all be having many more discussions along these lines in the very near future.

Episode Rating: 9/10

September 19, 2022

“The Rings Of Power” Episode 4 – Higher Highs And Lower Lows

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!**

“At the feet of the mountain were built the tombs of the Kings, and hard by upon a hill was Armenelos, fairest of cities, and there stood the tower and the citadel that was raised by Elros son of Eärendil, whom the Valar appointed to be the first King of the Dúnedain.”

– The Silmarillion: Akallabêth, p. 312

The text I have quoted above, which comprises part of a brief description of the island kingdom of Númenor in The Silmarillion, contains the very first instance of the name Armenelos in J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously published writings on Middle-earth (when Tolkien passed in 1973, he left The Silmarillion unfinished, and the task of piecing together a cohesive narrative from his scattered notes fell upon his youngest son, Christopher). Since The Silmarillion‘s publication in 1977, the name Armenelos has popped up again in Unfinished Tales and a few other places, but it never appeared in The Lord Of The Rings or its appendices, and was never added retroactively by either of the Tolkiens.

This may seem a small thing, but if you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you probably know where this is going. Yes, I was surprised – stunned, even – when the name Armenelos was casually used in conversation in the fourth episode of Amazon’s The Rings Of Power: which has until now drawn on The Lord Of The Rings and its appendices exclusively for information regarding Númenor and the events of the Second Age. Discounting all the place-names from Unfinished Tales that appeared on Amazon’s first official Rings Of Power tie-in map, which have deliberately been left off the map used throughout the series during scene-transitions, this usage of the name Armenelos marks the first time that something supposedly off-limits to the showrunners and writers has worked its way into The Rings Of Power.

So how did this happen? As far as we know, Amazon does not own the rights to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and there is no evidence to suggest that has changed. In this very episode, two characters reminisce about the land of Beleriand that sank beneath the sea at the end of the First Age, but they refer to locations there like the Mouths of Sirion only in vague terms, as though the writers were legally unable to use names from The Quenta Silmarillion (the third, and longest part of The Silmarillion, which deals with the wars in Beleriand) and instead had to resort to implication. My fool’s hope is that the Tolkien Estate is providing Amazon access to materials in both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales on a case-by-case basis.

Until we learn more, however, I will lower my expectations slightly and assume that the terms of this agreement with the Tolkien Estate apply only to the specific chapter of The Silmarillion where the name Armenelos originated, Akallabêth – an appendix of sorts that deals with the history of Númenor and its people. And make no mistake, Akallabêth may only be thirty pages long but it’s a goldmine: of all Tolkien’s writings on the Second Age, it’s the only one that covers the decline and eventual downfall of Númenor in great detail. It is here, and here alone, that Tolkien transcribes the dialogues on death between the mortal Men of Númenor and the immortal Elven ambassadors out of Valinor; here, and here alone, that he reports on Sauron’s seduction of the Númenóreans; here, and here alone, that he records the warnings of the Valar, which went unheeded by all but a few. With minimal expansions and additions, the materials in this appendix alone could easily fill out three or four seasons of The Rings Of Power.

Still, if the writers are theoretically allowed to use anything in Akallabêth that the Tolkien Estate is willing to sell (and Amazon is willing to pay for), one has to wonder why they settled on the name Armenelos, and how they convinced the higher-ups at Amazon to spend what I can only assume was a hefty sum of money for this obscure place-name, which they’ve used exactly once – not on the map of Númenor, where it would arguably help viewers get geographically situated, but as part of an improvised speech by the Númenórean politician Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) outside the Guild-Hall, where guild-members are gathering to complain about the possibility of tireless, immortal Elves stealing their jobs (more of that one-note fantasy racism that the writers must have thought was clever enough to include at the expense of character-building moments). Gravelle’s Pharazôn, a charismatic dictator in-the-making, reminds them that they alone are responsible for all of Númenor’s great accomplishments throughout history, from the vastly overstated military victories of Elros Tar-Minyatur, the first King, to the building of Armenelos, and vows that Elves will never take that away from them.

But while Pharazôn gains favor with the citizenry of Númenor, Queen-Regent Tar-Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) alone amongst her people can see that Númenor is falling out of favor with the Valar, Middle-earth’s gods, as her people turn away from Middle-earth in its hour of need, forsaking their old bonds of fellowship with the Elves. The falling petals of the White Tree growing in the Court of the Kings are a clear sign that the Valar weep for Númenor, one that even Pharazôn recognizes, but Tar-Míriel has seen in her dreams something far worse – a vision of the sea rising high over Númenor’s green hills before crashing down upon the land, carrying away the towers and palaces of fair Armenelos, pulling Míriel and all her people to a watery grave.

J.R.R. Tolkien was haunted by a similar dream throughout his life, and it was a trait he passed on to both his son Michael and to the character of Faramir in The Lord Of The Rings. From this vivid dream sprang fully-formed the story of Númenor, an ancient island kingdom comparable to Atlantis, sucked into the abyss by a “great dark wave”. Though the tale evolved over time, the significance of the Great Wave never diminished. Quite the opposite. In-universe and to some extent in real life, Tolkien postulated that dreams of the Great Wave were attributable to some cultural memory of Númenor left to linger in the minds of Men by the descendants of that traumatic event’s survivors – who naturally began referring to Númenor as Atalantë (the Downfallen), which then became Atlantis, by which name we know it today.

As one of the first recipients of this unsettling dream, chronologically at least, The Rings Of Power‘s Tar-Míriel has no way of knowing whether the “great dark wave” is a literal or metaphorical manifestation of the gods’ discontent, but it doesn’t really matter to her – either way, she’s just witnessed the imminent destruction of all that she holds dear in Númenor, and that can’t be a good thing. Searching frantically for a solution, Míriel first has to reverse-engineer her own problem. She comes to the bewildering conclusion that Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is the problem, so she has the Elf imprisoned…then has her released and sent back to Middle-earth to try and appease the Valar…then realizes at the last minute that the Valar brought Galadriel to Númenor for a reason, so she calls her back.

Structurally, this storyline is by far the weakest of the four we’re currently following because there are so many other characters in Númenor besides Galadriel and Míriel that The Rings Of Power is simultaneously trying to establish, which frequently requires jumping away from the characters that matter most to spend time with characters like Pharazôn’s unexciting and extraneous non-canonical son Kemen (Leon Wadham), who I gave the benefit of the doubt going in because other non-canonical characters like Eärien (Ema Horvath) had impressed me, only for him to disappoint greatly as a character in terms of both personality and design. As a result of all this needlessly urgent subplot-hopping that leaves little space for organic character and plot development in the main storyline, our protagonist’s motivations change from scene to scene with barely any build-up.

With all that said, when Galadriel and Tar-Míriel actually do interact, their scenes are invariably among the episode’s highlights – boasting some of the most eloquent dialogue in the series, and two phenomenal performances from actresses of equal regality whose characters balance each other out: the one confident, reckless to a fault, and slightly incompetent (I love Galadriel, but we all know it to be true), the other self-doubting and subsequently slow to action, but a capable leader when nudged in the right direction. They are also alike in many ways. Galadriel tells Míriel that she knows what it is to be the only one aware that something is terribly wrong, and the only one whose opinion is never asked for, or dismissed when proffered, because speaking the harsh truth makes her unpopular with those who would sugarcoat it.

However, as Galadriel’s suspiciously politically-savvy traveling companion Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) advises her while the two spend time together in a Númenórean jail-cell, there is a time and place for sugarcoating the truth when it will benefit you. It’s an underhanded tactic, one which Galadriel has never had the patience for, as she prefers to rush head-on at all her problems with the mindset of a warrior: even when attempting to follow Halbrand’s advice, she still resorts to beating up Pharazôn and a few Númenórean guards and breaking into the chambers of the old king, Tar-Palantir (Ken Blackburn), without any consideration for the consequences of her actions. Thankfully for her, Pharazôn either has a very short memory or was offered something by Halbrand after the camera cut away from them that convinced him to hold his tongue.

While this could conceivably count as a plot-hole, until and unless additional context for Pharazôn’s inaction comes to light, it doesn’t quite beggar belief like the idea that a single Elf could persuade Númenor to go to war in the Southlands based on one man’s unreliable testimony, without the backing of her own High King and without even fully comprehending the situation or the strength of her opposition. I understand that Galadriel is reckless, but Tar-Míriel is evidently not, and yet she demands no further information from Galadriel than the two scraps of paper she stole from the Hall of Lore that “prove” Sauron is regaining strength in the Southlands and that Halbrand is the long-lost king who can unite the Southlanders against him. Funny, isn’t it, that Halbrand is behind all of this?

What Galadriel doesn’t know is that the enemy in the Southlands whom she has been led to believe is Sauron (again, by Halbrand) is in fact an Elf – one played with cold majesty by Game Of Thrones‘ Joseph Mawle – who goes by the title “Adar“, the Sindarin Elvish word for father. Theories abound as to who this character is, or could have been in the distant past: popular suggestions include Maglor, the only surviving son of Fëanor who was scarred, physically and mentally, by the burden of the unbreakable Oath he and his father swore and which they could never fulfil; Maeglin, a Dark Elf who betrayed the location of Gondolin to Morgoth in the First Age and was thrown from the city’s parapets as a result (although in the chaos, no one ever recovered his body from the flames below); and the nameless Elf captured by Morgoth long before the First Age began, who was corrupted “by slow arts of cruelty” in the dungeons of Utumno until they became the first Orc or half-Orc.

There are clues pointing in every direction. Adar’s dark hair would suit either Maglor or Maeglin. The metal gauntlet he wears on his left hand supports the theory that he’s Maglor, whose hand was burned by the Silmaril he carried for a time…but Adar also has burn marks along the sides of his face, which could have come from centuries of torture in Utumno, or from being tossed into the fires that raged around Gondolin. It is he who mentions growing up in Beleriand and traveling down “the river” (likely referring to the River Sirion), and his breastplate depicts a winding river as well. Maglor would have gone down the River Sirion on his way to the Third Kinslaying. But what could have happened to Maglor that would soften a Fëanorian’s heart towards Orcs, the greatest enemies of his people? That’s more of a Maeglin thing, and Maeglin could have traveled down the Sirion with the refugees from Gondolin as well.

The problem with most of these theories is that most of the characters Adar could be, like Maglor and Maeglin, are mentioned only in The Quenta Silmarillion – and as we’ve established, Amazon probably doesn’t have those rights. If they do, it’s not something they’ve indicated yet, and the time to introduce Maglor and/or Maeglin was long ago, in the prologue to The Rings Of Power‘s very first episode. To retroactively explain who these characters are, and what their relevance is to the current story, would require extensive flashbacks at this point, which seems wasteful seeing as neither Maglor nor Maeglin is relevant, quite frankly, to the story of the Second Age. Both the Silmaril that Maglor carried and the city of Gondolin that Maeglin betrayed are lost forever beneath the waves of the Sundering Sea.

Well…there is one other connection between these characters and the current story that could be exploited for dramatic effect in The Rings Of Power, but only if Amazon has the rights to do so. Both Maglor and Maeglin are linked to the character of Elrond (Robert Aramayo). It was Elrond’s grandfather who pushed Maeglin off the walls of Gondolin after Maeglin tried to abduct his wife and son, Elrond’s father Eärendil. And during the Third Kinslaying, when Eärendil and Elrond’s mother Elwing fled across the sea to Valinor, it was Maglor (with his brother Maedhros) who rescued their twin sons and hid them in a cave, raising them as if they were his own children. None of this has been mentioned in The Rings Of Power yet, but Elrond has been talking a lot about his father recently.

What we learn about Eärendil in this episode is virtually everything that The Rings Of Power can legally say about him – that he was a great mariner, who led the host that defeated Morgoth at the end of the First Age and was afterwards appointed by the gods to safeguard one of the three Silmarils, which he took into the heavens with him. Once again, I have to applaud the writers for taking all of this arcane information, which to the average viewer means absolutely nothing on its own, and making it relevant in the context of the show. When Elrond observes his friend Durin IV (Owain Arthur) struggling under the weight of his father’s impossible expectations for him, he shares the story of his own father’s legendary exploits and awkwardly tries to make a point about family in a sincere attempt at outreach that comes across as self-centering and slightly condescending.

This has been a problem for Elrond, however, since the very first episode – when he told Galadriel that if she stopped fighting for once, she could focus on being his friend…as if Galadriel, who is several-thousand years older than Elrond, doesn’t have slightly more important things to do with her life than help an aspiring politician impress any one of his many morally ambiguous father figures. In this episode, it’s revealed that Durin IV and his wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete) don’t even trust Elrond completely, not so much because they think ill of him personally but because they can sense he’s being manipulated. Durin tells his father that he intends to go to Lindon and figure out what High King Gil-galad is using Elrond for, but he really ought to be keeping his eye on Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), who is even more blatantly weaponizing Elrond’s innocence for his own gain.

Durin gets the upper hand by forcing Elrond into a tricky situation from which the Elf can only extricate himself by swearing an oath to protect the greatest secrets of the Dwarves – an oath nearly as dangerous as that which Fëanor and his sons swore, with the potential to curse all of Elrond’s kin to sorrow if broken. This whole plot-point was created for The Rings Of Power, but I suppose it could explain why, canonically, Elrond’s family was so singularly unlucky. No spoilers, but the poor guy is abandoned by pretty much everyone he loves. If you’re familiar with Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, you probably already know about the fateful choices of Arwen Undómiel, Elrond’s daughter, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. His grief has multiple layers.

All that Elrond gains from swearing this terrible oath is advance-knowledge of mithril, the new ore discovered by the Dwarves in the mines beneath Khazad-dûm…and it’s not like Elrond can do anything with that information yet anyway, although he does walk away with a small chunk of mithril, a gift from Durin IV – from which I am certain either he or Celebrimbor will forge a Ring of Power in the near future: specifically Nenya, one of the Three Rings made exclusively by and for the Elves without interference from Sauron, which was given to Galadriel. Seeing as Amazon is compressing the timeline of Middle-earth’s history to the point where Khazad-dûm will likely be destroyed before the end of the Second Age (was that a Balrog’s roar we heard as the mine-shaft collapsed around Durin and Elrond?), mithril will soon become a scarce and prized commodity in the show, and even a little will go a long way.

Now that we have reached the midpoint of the first season, which has been quietly laying the groundwork for the forging of the Rings, it’s safe to assume that Elrond and his supporting cast of characters will gradually come to the forefront in the remaining four episodes until the season finale presumably reveals that their subplot has been, all along, the main event. I am still fairly confident – despite all the mounting evidence that Halbrand is a baddie – that Sauron is already deeply entrenched in Eregion, where he’s manipulating Celebrimbor. Halbrand I believe to be a servant of Sauron’s, likely the future Witch-King, assigned with keeping Galadriel distracted in the Southlands until Celebrimbor’s great forge is ready to take its first commission.

And Sauron being the type to try and kill two birds with one stone, I believe that Galadriel will accidentally remove the last obstacle standing between Sauron and his plans to conquer the Southlands – Adar, who is clearly revered by the Orcs that used to follow Sauron. With Adar gone (because there’s no way Galadriel doesn’t personally take him off the board before season’s end), Sauron will be able to swoop in and effortlessly regain control of his old armies, but first he’ll give the Orcs plenty of time to inflict heavy casualties on the Southlanders and Númenóreans, thereby ensuring that there will be little resistance to his eventual takeover when he gets around to it.

There’s one wildcard that Sauron probably hasn’t taken into account, and that’s Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), a young boy who is now in possession of a magical sword bearing the mark of Sauron, which seems to have powers and detrimental side-effects like those of the Morgul-blades wielded by the Nazgûl in The Lord Of The Rings – except that Theo isn’t affected by these side-effects which appear to be leaving a toll on his friend Rowan (Ian Blackburn), and nor is the old barkeep Waldreg (Geoff Morell), in whose barn Theo discovered the sword. Waldreg even rolls up his sleeve to reveal that he repeatedly used the sword in the same way Theo has, by stabbing its hilt into his forearm to activate the blade with his blood. My guess is that they both come from a long lineage of Sauron-worshippers, but that doesn’t explain why Adar is so desperate to get his hands on this sword.

In a harrowing long-shot sequence that once again demonstrates why Middle-earth is a veritable playground for horror auteurs interested in experimenting with fantasy elements on a grand scale, Theo is hunted by Orcs through the burning ruins of his hometown, smoked out of various hiding-places, and eventually lured into the arms of Vrath (Jed Brophy), possibly the most genuinely terrifying Orc to date in any adaptation of Tolkien’s works – so naturally he, Vrath that is, is killed off immediately. The Rings Of Power has many more well-designed and almost entirely practical Orcs where he came from, but none played by Brophy, who gave Vrath a little more personality than your run-of-the-mill Orc.

The Orcs’ canonical aversion to sunlight is also being played up, which means that action scenes involving Orcs end abruptly as soon as the sun rises and begin again after nightfall, except indoors and underground – assuming The Rings Of Power remains consistent with regards to this, and the Orcs don’t suddenly develop an immunity to sunlight when it’s time for a battle, we could be in for some really compelling “keep them fighting until the dawn” type scenarios where the characters are worn down and exhausted, but still need to hold out for an hour more: a bit like how Gandalf defeated the Trolls in The Hobbit, but sans the ventriloquist act.

Something else I had written down in my notes – while Wayne Che Yip’s direction and cinematography remain superior to J.A. Bayona’s in my opinion, he needs to chill out with all the slow-motion, because after a certain point it starts to get really obnoxious. The use of slow-motion also particularly de-emphasizes the innate speed and agility of the Elves, which could be intentional if the idea here is still that the Elves are just ordinary people with an aloof attitude they haven’t earned, but given that this episode finds Elrond eavesdropping on Durin and Disa from at least a mile away with the help of his enhanced eyesight and hearing, I kinda wish The Rings Of Power would choose a direction and commit to it fully. Are the Elves “magical” or not? Do they have special abilities as a reward for being Eru’s favorite children, or is all that pro-Elf propaganda we’ve been fed in The Silmarillion merely lies, to paraphrase Adar?

Personally, I would admire The Rings Of Power greatly if it deconstructed some of Tolkien’s favorite problematic tropes (namely, as you can probably guess, the whole Race Of Inherently Beautiful People Predisposed Towards Good trope that has proved so popular with white supremacists over the years), and I feel like if ever there was an opportunity to do just that, it would be in a story that encompasses all the greatest failures of Men and Elves in the Second Age. Now that we’re halfway through the first season and I’ve seen what the series’ best writers are capable of, I’ve come to expect more from The Rings Of Power in this regard than the occasional threadbare metaphor for racism (we haven’t reached Shadow And Bone-level lows, thank goodness, but we’re too close for comfort). While the fast pacing doesn’t often allow for much nuance and depth, that’s a problem the writers and director need to sort out if they ever plan to tackle Akallabêth.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay (who co-wrote this episode along with Paper Girls‘ Stephany Folsom) have guaranteed that The Rings Of Power, with its bright color palette and heroic protagonists, welcomes no comparisons to House Of The Dragon – but that doesn’t mean it must shy away from being complex, even subversive, in the way Tolkien’s own writing increasingly grew to be as he revised it later in his life. Otherwise, it runs the risk of appearing merely trite, and no amount of lore sprinkled into the dialogue will be able to redeem it then.

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

September 12, 2022

“The Rings Of Power” Episode 3 – New Allies And Enemies Arise In Númenor

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER EPISODE THREE AHEAD!**

“Then the Edain set sail upon the deep waters, following the Star [of Eärendil]….and saw afar the land that was prepared for them, Andor, the Land of Gift, shimmering in a golden haze. Then they went up out of the sea and found a country fair and fruitful, and they were glad. And they called that land Elenna, which is Starwards; but also Anadûnê, which is Westernesse, Númenórë in the High Eldarin tongue.”

– The Silmarillion: Akallabêth, p. 311

Only the first two episodes of The Rings Of Power were given to critics to review before the series’ release, and now having seen the third episode I believe that was a mistake on Amazon’s part. As was originally reported by TheOneRing.net in July of 2021, the first two episodes back-to-back form a feature-length prologue to The Rings Of Power, which like most prologues puts worldbuilding ahead of plot development – and that in turn led many professional critics to describe the series as slow and dense, which are legitimate criticisms of the first two episodes (though I personally disagree, and would even go so far as to say the first two episodes were fast-paced to a fault). However, the same cannot be said of episode three, which swiftly moves the story along and ends on an excellent cliffhanger that is sure to entice viewers back next week.

The difference is in the direction. Wayne Che Yip, whom I previously accredited with fixing the early mistakes of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time in its third episode, does the same for The Rings Of Power, and I hope that at this point he can truly level up as a director, past the point where Amazon only calls him in to put a fantasy series back on the right course after squandering two episodes. Yip brings a dynamism to The Rings Of Power that was absent throughout J.A. Bayona’s episodes, marked by their placid (albeit pleasing) cinematography and minimal stunt choreography. Under Yip’s direction, the camera and the characters are always in motion – even the lengthy dialogue sequences that Bayona rendered dry and lifeless go down easier, because Yip encourages his actors to move about, interacting freely with their environments and one another.

His one fault as a director is his proclivity for slow-motion, an overused effect in action films which can still be used to convey something more meaningful than the impact of a big explosion – but there’s a random quality to the scenes Yip shoots in slow-motion that suggests to me he’s just playing around with the effect to see what it can do for him, and somehow his experimental footage ended up in the final cut. In case it’s not immediately clear what I’m referring to, those bizarre thirty seconds of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) riding a horse along the beach in slow-motion while grinning from ear-to-pointed-ear like she’s in an equestrian apparel commercial took me all the way out of the episode. I appreciate that we got to see her happy for once, but at what cost?

Slow-motion is generally less jarring when used in the heat of an action sequence, where it can give viewers a much-needed moment to catch their breath and get their bearings – and that is certainly one of its purposes in the climactic action sequence of episode three, although Yip again overdoes it slightly. The skirmish, which pits two Silvan Elves and a handful of disposable human extras against roughly fifteen Orcs and one rabid Warg in broad daylight, isn’t even so complex that slow-motion shots are necessary to help viewers follow along – honestly, as long as you can keep track of Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the Warg, no one and nothing else is all that important to the outcome of the fight. It’s still a cool action sequence, however, and the Elven acrobatics are closer to what you’d expect from Peter Jackson’s films if that’s your thing.

But while an action sequence every now and again is a good thing to keep the stakes high, what really stood out to me about Arondir’s subplot in this week’s episode is that it would be right at-home amongst the pages of The Silmarillion, where there are already several stories of stoic Elven heroes forced to endure terrible suffering in captivity at the hands of Orcs, but few so intimate as this one. When ordered to uproot an old tree blocking the path which the Orcs have carved into the barren surface of the Southlands (what will later become known as Mordor), Arondir and his fellow Elves put their lives on the line to save the tree by suggesting they go around it, leading to the unceremonious execution of Arondir’s comrade, Médhor (Augustus Prew). Unwilling to let any more Elves die, Arondir tearfully agrees to fell the tree, but not before first asking for its forgiveness in the Quenya tongue of old. It’s a beautiful, tragic moment based in the deep knowledge that writers Justin Doble and Jason Cahill have of the lore (Doble snuck several Lord Of The Rings references into his writing on Stranger Things).

On the subject of lore, Amazon isn’t allowed to reference anything in The Silmarillion or Tolkien’s other posthumously published works by name unless it appears in The Lord Of The Rings or its appendices, but they can still convey a great deal of information through clever dialogue and subtle visual details, and that’s a loophole Wayne Che Yip, the writers, and production designer Ramsey Avery have taken advantage of at every possible opportunity – in the mixed architectural styles of Númenor, for instance, there are clear signs that the Edain are neglecting and even building over the ruins of Elven towers and citadels as they distance themselves from their immortal kinsfolk. What they’ve preserved are monumental statues of the Maiar responsible for guarding mariners on the open sea, Ossë and Uinen, and of the great mariner Eärendil with a seabird representing his shapeshifting wife Elwing. In Númenor’s Hall of Lore, a tapestry depicts the Star of Eärendil beaming down on the island realm’s first king, Elros, and his twin brother Elrond.

I hate to call these Easter eggs, because that term seems to be used primarily in relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days, but fans of any franchise are much the same: we all get ridiculously excited over the most obscure bits and pieces of lore that only we can explain to our friends and family with the help of an hour-long PowerPoint presentation. The first two episodes of The Rings Of Power, which some critics said were “dense”, didn’t have many of those Easter eggs – probably because the writers and director hoped the show would be more accessible if it weren’t crammed full of references to things beyond their ability to explain. I absolutely get that. But also…I’ve been waiting for this moment.

For more casual viewers, however, this episode may be rather overwhelming as it abandons two major plotlines we followed consistently throughout episodes one and two (both of which ended on cliffhangers last week), while simultaneously introducing the entirely new region of Númenor and not one, not two, not even three or four, but five new characters: a few of whom are predestined to have equal importance to anyone we’ve already met. Not all are treated as such in this episode – for instance, one could easily make the mistake of assuming the character of Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), still merely a counsellor to the Queen-Regent, has little to no significance in the overarching story – but be prepared to spend much more time with all these characters, as their story is the overarching story of Middle-earth’s Second Age. They’re not going anywhere.

And what of Númenor, the fabled island kingdom never before seen onscreen? Though nearly every wide-shot of the capital city is comprised entirely of CGI, large sections of the harbor and Court of the Kings were built as practical sets, decorated, furnished, and populated by crowds of actors and extras for weeks on end, giving each space that feeling of being lived-in that made Jackson’s adaptations so revolutionary for the fantasy genre at their time (though he erred, I feel, in designing Minas Tirith as a cold, oversized gray wedding-cake dropped in the middle of nowhere). On street-corners throughout the city, there are craftspeople and merchants representing every one of Númenor’s Guilds, puppet-shows providing the citizenry all the latest dramatized gossip (including a depiction of Galadriel rescuing the Queen-Regent from…Morgoth?), and open-air restaurants serving seafood. The city – indeed, the whole island – is unmistakably alive, and home to a resplendent culture.

The Númenórean culture created from scratch for The Rings Of Power is built around sea-worship, in what I suspect is a clever example of reverse-engineering (no spoilers, but if you know you know). For aid in actualizing this concept, the production design team and VFX artists have looked first to the seafaring cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean for inspiration. Númenor’s primary architectural influences range from Byzantine to vaguely Babylonian by way of the Greek islands. Its people wear Greek or Italian-Renaissance era garments and hairstyles (well, the extras do), while the royalty make use of nautical patterns, marine gemstones, and jewelry fashioned in the shape of sea-creatures and coral. Its ships have Egyptian or Phoenician silhouettes (although their wing-like sails are very loosely based on those of Chinese junks, with a fantastical twist meant to evoke the wings of Aragorn’s crown).

This is, after all, the land of Aragorn’s distant ancestors; a tall, hardy, and extremely long-lived branch of the human race who fought alongside Elves in the First Age and were rewarded for their sacrifices with the mountainous, many-sided island on which they now isolate themselves from Middle-earth’s troubles – and those of their fellow Men, whom they regard as generally inferior to themselves in every way. Through the character of Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), a Southlander whom we see beaten up, mocked, and derisively called “Low Man” by Númenóreans out looking for a fight, The Rings Of Power tentatively begins to explore this conflict which past adaptations have shied away from, either because it’s too complicated or because it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that the crimes of Aragorn’s ancestors went far beyond their inability to dispose of the One Ring.

If The Rings Of Power doesn’t abruptly back out of this conversation with its hands in the air, as I still fear it might, the series could provide an entry-point into more challenging discussions around race and racism in Tolkien’s writings – because honestly, these are discussions we need to be having now more than ever. Feigning shock at the very notion that Tolkien’s works contain aspects of racist ideology, as many fans and scholars have in the past few weeks, isn’t how we combat the racists who have adopted the book as some kind of white supremacist myth. At the same time, I understand that many fans (particularly fans of color) want to see fantasy-worlds free of racism and bigotry, so it’s definitely a tricky situation.

On a similar note, the Harfoots in this episode are revealed to have a shockingly grim tradition of ableism in their community. While they get ready to embark on one of their annual migrations across Wilderland, with a procession of kids dressed as wolves and birds-of-prey all chanting the phrase “Nobody goes off-trail! Nobody walks alone!”, Largo Brandyfoot (Dylan Smith) tries to reassure his wife Marigold (Sara Zwangobani) that his broken ankle won’t be a problem for them and their family even though they both know the Harfoots will in fact – without any hesitation whatsoever – leave their weakest members to walk alone at the back of the caravan, where whatever happens to them ceases to be the community’s problem.

In the final, most horrific stage of this whole charade, Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry) recites the names of all the Harfoots who died in the past year, either because they could not keep up – as I assume was the case with one Miles Brightapple, stuck in a mountain-pass…which in turn has me wondering if the Harfoots travel as far south as the Ered Lithui? – or for other terrible reasons, like the landslide that wiped out Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards)’s entire family or the wolves that got Daffodil Burrows, whom I assume had personal significance to Sadoc. The Harfoots’ response to tragedy is not to work together, but instead to prioritize the survival of a few while compartmentalizing their grief until it’s safe to mourn.

We see that attitude slowly beginning to change, however, as Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh)’s kindness towards others – which most of the Harfoots see as a weakness that will get her killed – actually results in not one but two friends coming to her rescue: first Poppy, who hangs back to help even though she could easily keep up with the others, and then the mysterious Stranger (Daniel Weyman), who understands, perhaps instinctively, that Elanor is in trouble and needs his help. This should have been the moment where the rest of the Harfoots came back to help too, but they made it abundantly clear that they don’t value friendships the way Elanor and her new found family do. Their loss.

While we’re on the subject, it’s heavily implied throughout this episode that the Stranger is not such a bad guy after all, though he still can’t coherently vocalize his own agenda in Middle-earth or explain why he occasionally murders fireflies, so the possibility remains that he’s not such a good guy, either. Maybe he’s somewhere in between. What is clear is that he’s looking for a particular constellation in the sky (or whatever it is that this constellation represents to him), one that Elanor is not familiar with, and he believes the Harfoots can lead him…somewhere he can see this constellation, possibly? That would presumably require a long journey to lands east and south of Wilderland “where the stars are strange”, according to Aragorn’s reports in the Third Age, but The Rings Of Power did promise to take us to “the furthest reaches of the map”.

If this is the case, and the Harfoots must take the Stranger east or south, it would certainly lend credence to the theory that he is one of the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who were sent to Middle-earth in the Second Age by the Valar to stir up resistance against Sauron behind the front-lines. The only problem with this theory, of course, is that the names of the two Blue Wizards and all the details of their accomplishments can only be found in Unfinished Tales, to which Amazon does not possess the rights…that, and we only saw one meteor streak across the sky in the first episode, although it’s possible the other Wizard was already in Middle-earth, or came from a different direction, or took a different mode of transportation entirely. It’s equally likely that the Stranger is just Gandalf.

Three episodes into The Rings Of Power, and our burning questions about the Stranger and about Sauron have yet to be answered: though we did find out that Sauron’s mysterious sigil, which he carved into Finrod’s chest and various other surfaces during the First Age, was in fact a highly-stylized map of Mordor meant to guide lost orcs into the embrace of a leader after the downfall of Morgoth. Frankly, I think that raises more questions than it answers (how did Sauron know Morgoth’s downfall was imminent? Why leave a map of his secret headquarters on a body he knew the Elves would take and analyze? Why is his plan only going into effect now, near the end of the Second Age?), but we don’t have time to address any of those questions in this episode.

We do apparently have time for an entirely unrelated mystery subplot involving Isildur (Maxim Baldry), whom we meet as a young man reluctantly training to be in the Númenórean navy, as he hears a voice calling him to the island’s western shores, the homeland of his paternal ancestors; this leads to a weird, vague conversation over dinner between Isildur and his father Elendil (Lloyd Owen) – and Isildur’s sympathetic sister Eärien (Ema Horvath), who has her own interesting journey ahead of her – in which Elendil warns Isildur that “the past is dead” and not to go down the same path as his brother Anárion…who is canonically younger than Isildur, so I’m not entirely sure what is going on here or whether we even need to care yet.

Then there’s a second new mystery subplot, currently unrelated to Sauron and at best only tangentially connected to Isildur and Elendil, one which involves Tar-Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), Queen-Regent of Númenor, and her father Tar-Palantír – who I believe are conspiring via a literal palantír to assist the Elves and their allies in Númenor. The timeline is being urgently sped up, and the divisions between Elf-friends (who still worship the Valar) and King’s Men (those who worship the divinely-appointed human rulers of Númenor) are already so prominent that Elendil is fearful to even translate his Quenya name, which just means “Lover of the Stars” but was also historically used to mean “Elf-friend”.

If you can believe it, there’s a third new mystery – but this one actually is connected to Sauron. Adar, the Sindarin Elvish word for “Father” from which this episode derives its title, is a word we first hear whispered by the orcs in a reverent tone as they punish their prisoners, and we soon learn that it’s a title by which they address their leader, whom we glimpse at the very end of the episode emerging from the shadows to interrogate Arondir, the only survivor of a failed prison-break that claimed the life of his comrade, Revion (Simon Merrells, very well-cast as an Elf but gone too soon). Adar, whose true name is probably of great lore significance, has long dark hair framing a gaunt, pale face…and if you’re not up-to-date with Rings Of Power leaks, that might be all you know of him just yet, so I’ll say no more for fear of spoiling casual viewers.

That’s where we leave Arondir and the rest of our characters for the week, and that’s where I must now leave you too (unless you want me to start rambling on about my new favorite characters, Poppy and Eärien, because I can and I will if left unchecked), but not before delivering my final verdict. The Rings Of Power‘s third episode is far and away its strongest, boosted effortlessly to the top of my rankings by a balance of high-stakes drama and action, grand spectacle, deep-cut lore for the fans, and heart most crucial of all – and even a dash of romantic chemistry, if you want to interpret Galadriel and Halbrand’s interactions that way. Wayne Che Yip has done it again, but this time on an even bigger scale than with The Wheel Of Time, and I could not be more excited for the episodes ahead of us that he directed.

Episode Rating: 9.5/10